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Marshmallow Candy
Cocoanut 3 cups light brown sugar ¾ cup Dromedary 1/2 cup milk 1/2 lb. marshmallows Boil sugar and milk slowly, but do not stir. Boil until it forms a soft ball in cold water. Remove from fire and beat in the marshmallows and cocoanut. Beat until thick and creamy, spread in a buttered tin and mark in squares before cold. 1 cup sugar COCOANUT
The ingredient list has been mangled in transcription, so read it carefully before you start: this is a brown-sugar fudge in which marshmallows replace the beaten egg white of an older divinity.
- Reading the quantities"34 cup Dromedary" is almost certainly 3/4 cup of Dromedary shredded coconut, and the trailing "1 cup sugar COCOANUT" is stray type from the neighbouring recipe on the page. Work from 3 cups light brown sugar, 1/2 cup milk, 1/2 lb marshmallows and 3/4 cup coconut.
- Soft ball, in numbers"Forms a soft ball in cold water" is 235-240F on a candy thermometer. Below that the squares will not set; above it they turn grainy and hard.
- Do not stirThe instruction is the hinge of the recipe. Stirring a boiling sugar syrup seeds crystals on the pan wall and the finished candy goes sandy. Wash down the sides with a wet brush instead and leave the spoon out until the pan is off the heat.
- Dromedary coconutThe brand sold shredded coconut. Sweetened shredded coconut is the closest match; unsweetened desiccated will drink up moisture and stiffen the mixture.
- Marshmallows then and nowMarshmallows -- Cut standard marshmallows in half, or use miniatures, and add them the moment the pan leaves the heat while the syrup is hot enough to melt them.
- Beating and the window for spreadingBeat only until the gloss dulls and the mass thickens, then get it into the pan at once. Brown-sugar candy sets fast, and if it stiffens in the bowl it will not spread level.
- Pan and yieldAn 8-inch square pan, buttered, gives pieces about 3/4 inch thick and roughly 36 squares. Score the grid while the surface is still warm; once cold it fractures rather than cuts.
Dromedary was the grocery brand of the Hills Brothers Company of New York, best known for packaged dates and for shredded coconut, and it issued small recipe booklets to show shoppers what else the tin or packet could do. The candy itself belongs to a specific moment in American home confectionery: commercial marshmallows, cheap and widely available by the 1910s and 1920s, gave cooks a shortcut past the beaten egg white of older divinity and nougat recipes. Melted into a hot brown-sugar syrup they act as both aerator and stabiliser, which is why the mixture turns "thick and creamy" under the spoon with no eggs in sight. The brown sugar puts it closer to penuche than to a candy-shop fondant.